Hello
I am currently in my third year (4 year course) of a Forensic Bioscience Degree. I have completed IT at GCSE and A-Level but no degree. I am self taught on most of what I know in IT (hence the lack of IT qualifications).
I am looking at what possible jobs I could go into after I graduate (2014) and think this would be a really interesting career to go into and combines my love of computing and forensics.
But as my lecturers are biased towards lab based careers (and refuse to help with any enquires non-lab related) I was hoping someone here could help explain if there is a chance I could get into this career with the degree I (will) have or whether it is not possible without me completing another degree.
I want to try and avoid having to complete another degree but would be willing to complete night classes or short computer courses if that would strengthen my case.
Any information you could provide would be a great help as I have hit a brick wall when it comes to finding 'generic' entry requirements for this career.
Thank you for reading
Amy
I am not sure of the real value of a CF degree, from what I have seen (CV's) and people I have spoken to (CF students) the knowledge level of a CF grad wouldn't have me waiting with baited breath for the next one to come knocking at my door.
To be fair I have never interviewed a recent CF grad (expect those with lots of CF experience before they took their course). But in my experience there is absolutely no substitute for experience. I have however interviewed LOTs of people for CF/data recovery jobs (before CF degrees were around).
If I were interviewing you I would not see your degree as an entry barrier but rather as a door opener. I would however want you to show at interview that you had a grasp of relevant IT and a good problem solving head. I like people with any good sciencey degree as I see a degree as showing the ability to learn and for an entry at junior level I never expected them to know much.
Get a very good low level knowledge of disks and operating systems (not all just how FAT or NTFS fits together) and be able to talk about it and explain basically how it works. Do some programming and write a very basic file system extractor/file carver (make it easy and read from a single volume monolithic dd image).
One of the questions Dr Solomon asked me (Christ - over 20 years ago now) at my second interview was to explain how a FAT table works? I saw his eyes light up when I said "lets start with a directory entry" and he was more pleased when he asked me about partition tables and I said I had written my own partition editor, and yet more pleased when I told him I had trashed a hard disk while experimenting ). When I couldn't explain how an extended partition worked (at the interview) he grabbed a bit of paper and explained it too me.
Thank you for this it has been a big help! Nice to know it isn't all about having the exact degree name!
Do you have any recommendations of places, text books, magazines etc to go through to help with the FAT, NTFS and Programming information?
Do you have any recommendations of places, text books, magazines etc to go through to help with the FAT, NTFS and Programming information?
Brian carriers "File system forensic analysis" - only book that stays permanently on my desk. The information is available elsewhere (particularly on the web) but it is a great one stop source.
Thank you you have been a great help!
Just to reiterate, I started in the industry just over 5 years ago as a graduate but without a relevant degree, all I had was some good OS knowledge and programming experience. The team I joined had a mix of backgrounds less than half had Comp Sci degrees.
5 years on and there are a lot more graduates who want to get into the industry and a lot of those have Computer Forensic based degrees, so it may seem more competitive for entry level jobs, but I think really employers are aware that they will have to take graduates in and do the work to train them to the standard they require. It will very much come down to the company but I imagine showing an ability to learn fast, bags of enthusiasm and having a detail oriented enquiring mindset would be higher on the wish list than degree subject.
If you have a strong academic background you could look into KPMG or PWC graduate roles in forensic technology.
Paul is of course right when he suggests learning off your own back, I echo the recommendation for the Carrier book and would also recommend Forensic Computing for Practitioners (Sammes and Jenkinson).
The standard advice to all graduates is if you arent lucky enough to break into the industry straight away, consider any IT job to get some experience under you belt (and also any opportunities for work experience while you study).
Good luck
My background is not dissimilar to Paul's - except I had no one to explain extended partitions to me, I had to discover for myself.
When running my own business there were never any degrees in 'Non native restoration of tapes' so I chose people with suitable programming skills who I thought would develop and fit in.
I would still consider character is more important than an exact degree/experience match. However, large companies and 'Civil service' put a lot of emphasis on training and paper qualifications.
For forensics I think it is very important to be able to understand data structures, and not be phased by Hex dumps. After that, it is using the most appropriate tool to get the next stage of your answer. If you cannot understand your raw data, you will be lost.
Do as Paul did and write some tools to analyse something, hit some brick walls and find a way around them. Start thinking in Hex (ignore decimal) and dive into unknown data and make sense of it (with the aid of some of the books already mentioned).
